A Day In Howth

    What a great experience! We spent the entire day with Ida and Liam. We met them on an earlier stop in Ireland. We did not get to Dublin until 11 this morning (we sailed at 10:30 pm) so we did have a bit of time this morning. We did go to the zumba class. It started at 9:30 and ran for about 45 minutes. It was not the gold level. Great workout! The instructor is not as good as the one we had in South America but it was as intensive. I am sure they both went to the same school! A quick shower and we were ready to go ashore by 11:30 which was the arranged meeting time.

    As we headed ashore we were caught in the crowd of ship's tours that were headed off at the same time. We did manage to find Ida and Liam. I think they saw us. They were parked just beyond the buses which is where they were the last time they met us.

We headed downtown for a quick ride around the city centre, then headed out of town for about 10 miles to a small fishing port called Howth. Being Sunday if was busy. It is a working port where the trawlers put in to land their fish. It is on a very narrow strip of land with fish markets on one side of the street and the trawlers on the other.

The Castle

    They had made lunch reservations at an upscale restaurant called Aqua. Very nice. In all our emails we had insisted that we take them for lunch. Their son Nile and grandson Connor had just arrived from Spain and accompanied us to the restaurant. After a great bowl of chowder and an order of fish and chips, I was stuffed. The biggest surprise is that they treated us again. They would not hear of us paying.

Howth

    After we drove around the area. We went to an old castle close by. The manor was now closed but there was a golf course on the grounds. Some boys were kicking coloured 'soccer' balls down the course. We realized later that there were large basket like holes with flags in front of every green. Soccer golf? Even our hosts had not heard or seen that before. After a bit more site seeing we were back in Dublin.

    We ended our visit to one of the neighbourhoods with old restored row houses that we visited the last time we were here. The area is a very exclusive,

Dublin Doors

expensive part of the city with many professional offices located in the various buildings. The doors are all brightly painted in many different colours. It was very impressive. A short ride found us back at the ship where we said our goodbyes. It was wonderful day. We did not get back until 7 in the evening.

  Dinner was fast and sparsely attended. Most were off watching the soccer game! We were served in record time as the waiters had something planned. A group called “Gaels Afloat” played Irish music with 3 dancers in the Princess Theatre. They were very good. That ended probably our best day so far thanks to our wonderful hosts.